The invention relates to a watercraft which is propelled by the wind, in which a freely flying kite-like element on which wind acts and with a wing profile is connected to the vessel body only via a hawser.
A watercraft such as this is known from WO/097448. This vessel has the disadvantage that the aerodynamic shape of the element on which wind acts can be varied exclusively by means of additional control lines, which are routed to the hull of the vessel. This results in the difficulty that, when the element on which wind acts is flying at high altitudes, the additional lines represent a considerable mass because of the long length that they have to have, so that the propulsion performance is decreased, because this mass must additionally be supported by the wind propulsion element, and the corresponding force therefore cannot be converted to forward propulsion. Furthermore, a plurality of pulling lines can become entangled (fouled or twisted).